A large number of sensors are capacitive—the physical effect being measured is translated into a change in capacitance which can then be measured electrically. In many cases the two terminals of the sensor capacitor are floating, that is, neither are at a fixed potential. This is very convenient when interfacing the sensor to a measurement circuit, as there is no restriction on the circuit topology. A typical interface circuit will apply an excitation to one terminal of the capacitor, and extract the sensor signal from the other terminal.
However, in some cases one of the sensor capacitor terminals is at a fixed potential, for example, ground. This then limits the circuit topologies that can be used. The signal must now be recovered from the same terminal that is used for applying the excitation. In one common method of interfacing to this type of circuit the sensor terminal is connected to a fixed voltage Vx on a first clock phase, and is then connected to a summing node of an integrator in a second phase. This has the effect of transferring a charge equal to (Vx−Vy)*Csensor to the integrator, where Vy is the voltage at the input of the integrator.
The Vy term is a problem. The input of the integrator is nominally at the AC ground point, which can be a fixed voltage but is more often at half the supply voltage. In the latter case the voltage Vy will vary directly with variations on the supply. In both cases the input of the integrator is at a voltage slightly different from the AC ground point, and this voltage difference will depend on the amplifier offset and gain. The gain in particular will vary with supply voltage and temperature. In all cases the variation in Vy will corrupt the charge being transferred from the sensor to the integrator, and will cause an error in the measurement of the sensor output. With these single input integration circuits the integration amplifier offset error and 1/f low frequency noise cannot be easily corrected.